Charge-coupled devices (CCDs) and other photoelectric image sensors are often used to capture image data. These sensors are typically manufactured with grid of light-sensing pixels. The grid may include anywhere from tens of pixels to millions of pixels. The image sensors are typically placed inside a camera or other imaging device. In the camera, the image sensors are exposed to light waves for a predefined amount of time using a shudder. Once exposed to light, each pixel in the image sensor detects a light intensity value. This value is scanned for each pixel, and stored in an image file.
In some cases, CCDs or other image sensors may be used in video applications where the sensor is continuously exposed to light. In such cases, the pixels of the sensor are scanned in a periodic manner, where each scan creates a frame in the video. The data from each scan is passed to memory and then on to a processor for downstream analysis and image generation. In some cases, image sensor scans may be performed at a relatively high rate, generating hundreds or thousands of frames each second. The large amount of data generated by these frequent scans may be difficult to process and/or transmit in situations where processing or transmission bandwidths are limited.